John Locke: Liberal, Libertarian, or License to Kill?

Matt Bruenig of the liberal think tank Demos recently enlisted John Locke’s First Treatise in making the case for “freedom from want,” which provoked a combox and Twitter rejoinder from Cato’s Jason Kuznicki. Here’s the passage Bruenig quotes:

a man can no more justly make use of another’s necessity to force him to become his vassal, by with-holding that relief God requires him to afford to the wants of his brother, than he that has more strength can seize upon a weaker, master him to his obedience, and with a dagger at his throat offer him death or slavery.

Kuznicki responded by invoking the Second Treatise as a development of Locke’s thought—which Bruenig finds problematic, noting that the First Treatise was actually composed later. (A full account of how and when the two treatises were written gets complicated.) In any case, Kuznicki need not have looked so far afield, when Locke’s elaboration of his thought is to be found just one paragraph later:

Should any one make so perverse an use of God’s blessings poured on him with a liberal hand; should any one be cruel and uncharitable to that extremity; yet all this would not prove that propriety in land, even in this case, gave any authority over the persons of men, but only that compact might; since the authority of the rich proprietor, and the subjection of the needy beggar, began not from the possession of the lord, but the consent of the poor man, who preferred being his subject to starving. And the man he thus submits to, can pretend to no more power over him, than he has consented to, upon compact.

Read on and you’ll find that Locke brings this back to a refutation of those (like Filmer) who ground political authority in God’s grant of the earth to some particular lineage. What Locke is at pains to explain here is that owning land does not mean one owns the people on the land—they may not be reduced to slaves; they also may not be reduced to feudal vassals—but rather whatever legitimate governing there is must derive from the subject’s consent at some level.

Libertarians who don’t like contractarianism object to Locke precisely because of this myth: whether or not real-world consent is given, Locke builds his system so that consent is invoked as a justification for authority. These passages show Locke pulling the same trick with respect to economic power: the renter is subject to the owner not because the owner has inherent absolute power over his land and what’s on it but because the renter is in effect consenting by renting. The renter or the citizen may be under the authority of the owner or government, but he is only under that authority because he consents to it—thus the weaker party remains free in the way that matters most to Locke, if not to us. This right of consent (or not) is inalienable, which has implications for Locke’s larger scheme of politics and political economy, and it’s not nothing. But it’s far short of guaranteeing what a modern liberal is likely to mean by “freedom from want.”

Locke obviously is concerned about material needs, however, and believes that every man has a right to have those needs met, including by other people. The thing that has to be considered carefully is how those needs are to be met. There are at least two possibilities: other people can set aside enough wilderness—in North America, say, or the English commons—that any man whose needs are unmet at present may have use of open resources and thus provide for himself. Another possibility, however, is the one brought to the reader’s attention as Locke points out that the vast lands of North America are rather poor, whereas the very limited, already homesteaded lands of England are rich. To supply a surplus sufficient for everyone, then, what’s important is not open land but enclosed land: private property whose surpluses may be obtained by the needy through consensual exchanges. How big a role political arrangements (which are another outcome of consent) may play in this, either in Locke’s own view or in a modern adaptation of his theory, is open to some interpretation.

Without delving into much more detail for now, suffice to say that libertarians and modern welfare-state liberals alike may be troubled by a closer examination of Locke’s views of government and property. Consider, for example, Joseph Stromberg’s provocative reading of Locke as arch-imperialist:

No stranger to mercantilism and colonial imperialism, Locke nevertheless argued that land is not rightly acquired by conquest unless it has been lying idle. This exception is extremely important, since Locke artfully fitted his “natural” right to property to English Protestant practices. Non-Europeans need not apply. Locke conceded that God had given land to mankind in common. On the other hand, the “industrious and rational” can—indeed must—prevent its being “wasted.” They can “mix” their labor with land to acquire it but must maximize the product. Anyone failing to maximize could rightfully be dispossessed—Indians in America, non-enclosing peasants at home. In effect, Locke promoted freedom for a minority of industrious Englishmen—a freedom to be paid for through constant growth premised in part on overseas empire.

There was a religious side to this colonialism as well. Recall that Locke’s toleration did not extend to Catholics. This was in part ye olde English prejudice—think Titus Oates and that kind of thing—but there’s also a deep Protestant sectarian basis for Locke’s ideas about consent and legitimate institutionalization of authority. Catholicism was not just historically incompatible with English ways, but Locke’s theory is very particularly a politics wedded to a religious tendency.

All of which is to say that there are many layers to Locke. His notions of liberty may not, on examination, be for everyone.

MORE FROM THIS AUTHOR

Hide 16 comments

16 Responses to John Locke: Liberal, Libertarian, or License to Kill?

Of course Locke didn’t like Catholicism. Catholics had been at the center of the worst religious persecutions England had seen (Bloody Mary), plots to kill the King and all of Parliament (the Guy Fawkes conspiracy), and frequent attempts to invite Spain to invade England.

That historical background, rather than any deeper theological dispute, is why Locke didn’t see Catholicism as part of a liberal society.

“King Henry Murdered 7 Catholic Canonized Martyrs and 33 Catholic Blessed Martyrs From the execution of two cardinals, two archbishops, 18 bishops, 13 abbots of large monasteries, 500 priors and monks, 38 University Doctors , 12 Dukes or Counts, 164 noblemen, 124 private citizens and 110 women. These were all without the excuse of any particular reasons of State. Total 983.”

Ekizabeth I murdered 48 Catholic Priests (including one Dominican and two Jesuits) and murdered 20 Catholic Laymen, all except two were condemned under the new Elizabethan laws.
The murderous Queen Elizabeth I was responsible for the killing fields of Ireland, which ran red with the blood of innocent victims. It is estimated that 1.5 million Irish Catholic peasants were starved or “put to the sword” and their lands seized by English predators, while she reigned.

The Catholic Church was a disgusting, brutal, oppressive institution along with all of its massive charitable and compassionate works. People in the countries dominated, terrorized, and ripped off by the church and its priests, whether Protestant or not, SHOULD have hated and resented the Catholic Church. I was raised Catholic and still attend Mass regularly, but there is no whitewashing the sickness perpetrated on a wide scale by “our” church in the past.

Of course, human nature being what it is, many Protestants were quite happy to take revenge, in equally brutal and cruel ways, against Catholics who fell under their control.

In Locke’s favor, I suppose, one might note his essay on the education of gentlemen, in which he helped invent the whole idea of the English gentleman. (So it is said.) That was probably not a bad thing in itself. For the rest, I don’t have much to say in favor of Locke.

Hey, Joe — it’s an essay I still remember years later. I was a little surprised to see it was published back in 2010.

Most of the comments have focused on the bloody political history of Catholic-Protestant relations in Britain, and Locke wasn’t being unusually paranoid in having all that in mind. What I find more interesting, though, is how Locke’s political theory resembles certain Protestant ecclesiological tendencies, with the “assembly” having full power to organize itself. If one accepts that principle in ecclesiology, applying it to politics seems unproblematic. But if one refuses that principle in ecclesiology, as Catholics do (the Church has some power to organize itself, but apostolic succession and the primacy of the See of St. Peter are not things that the community of believers can change), does the case for accepting it in politics become weaker?

I’m guessing you quoted that from some Irish Catholic site, but those numbers are drops in the ocean compared to what Catholics did to Protestants in England, Scotland and Europe. Its ridiculous to call the death of priests and bishops “murder” in the context of religious wars as well.

Elizabeth I did fight a war in Ireland which completed the second English conquest of Ireland. About 30,000 Gaelic Irish starved, and presumably other innocents died too. Having said that, I lolled at your use of “predators”.

I’m not sure. The tendency of societies to picture the political order as replicating the cosmic order seems ineradicable,(as Voegelin massively says), but I’m not sure these analogies have led to very good results overall.

Henry Parker 1604-1652) probably lies behind much of Locke’s politics, with his (Parker’s) radically Protestant invocation of the people, who turn out to be Parliament, which turns out to have as much unmeasurable power as the king ever claimed. (See Michael Mendle, *Henry Parker and the English Civil War, 1995.) I am reminded of Belloc’s remark that a political Calvinist conceives of appointing a representative and then giving him total power. Probably a bad bargain.

This exception is extremely important, since Locke artfully fitted his “natural” right to property to English Protestant practices. Non-Europeans need not apply. Locke conceded that God had given land to mankind in common. On the other hand, the “industrious and rational” can—indeed must—prevent its being “wasted.” They can “mix” their labor with land to acquire it but must maximize the product. Anyone failing to maximize could rightfully be dispossessed—Indians in America, non-enclosing peasants at home.

So that’s bad? So Europeans should not have colonized North and South America, but let those continents remain in the Stone Age, with eternal genocidal wars, eternal slavery, and no way of improving mankind’s upward strive whatsoever? How Christian. How completely meaningless.

By the same logic, homo sapiens should never have taken Europe from the Neanderthals. That would have been “morally good”, right? How much better the world would have been, right?

I prefer a Promethean morality where actions are weighed in accordance with how much good they do for Life’s upward strive. Life’s continued evolution, and a scientific effort to extend our reach and knowledge, so that Life can survive forever. Instead of this planet one day becoming a lifeless ball of dust again, no matter how “moral” that would be by Christian standards.

“Libertarians who don’t like contractarianism object to Locke precisely because of this myth: Whether or not real-world consent is given, Locke builds his system so that consent is invoked as a justification for authority.”

Yes, except Locke’s theory also justifies overthrowing a government when the consent of the governed is no longer given to the government. That’s how the American Revolution was justified. The fact is just that, you have to make a choice: whether to revolt or whether to assume obligations.

Anarcho-capitalists have responded that by saying that not just peoples can revolt publicly, but individuals can revolt privately. Which is fine, and doesn’t necessarily go against the logic of Social Contract theory. Social Contract is a descriptive over a prescriptive theory, although there are prescriptive elements. Its an attempt to explain the natural basis of government.

I assume he would agree that the renter could also revolt from the land owner, would it not be for the role of the state to prohibit that and protect the owner’s property.

Daniel says:What I find more interesting, though, is how Locke’s political theory resembles certain Protestant ecclesiological tendencies, with the “assembly” having full power to organize itself.

See the early Assembly, per book of Acts: they voted to elect ministers, send apostles, etc. This continued for centuries, as Catholic writers attest.
For a long time, churches elected their bishops (overseers), including the bishop of Rome. When and why did that stop? Every adherent of appointed episcopal church government should want an answer to that question.

If one accepts that principle in ecclesiology, applying it to politics seems unproblematic. But if one refuses that principle in ecclesiology, as Catholics do (the Church has some power to organize itself, but apostolic succession and the primacy of the See of St. Peter are not things that the community of believers can change), does the case for accepting it in politics become weaker?

Quite obviously, it does – if one is attempting consistency.
The tension between top-down government in one sphere and bottom-up government in the other offers insight as to the majority Christian resistance to the Catholic influx to this country. It wasn’t just groundless “nativist anti-Catholic bigotry.”
Note that adherents to a top-down, unaccountable ecclesiastical machine built the top-down, unaccountable urban political machines, and thus have greatly speeded our subjection to the increasingly top-down, unaccountable national political machine we are resisting today.

…[T]he ecclesiasticism which, in the name of religion, imposes its 1etters upon ignorance and superstition, and which in this country seeks the alliance of bosses, as in Europe does that of kings, is the deadly foe of civil as of religious liberty.